


Rather Be In The Sky

by Sab



Category: The X-Files
Genre: (Uploaded by Punk), F/M, Fantasy Fox Mulder, Scully Goes Flying Instead, Single-Engine Fixed-Wing Airplanes, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-06-21
Updated: 2000-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:34:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/696847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sab/pseuds/Sab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At twenty-nine hundred feet the ground was someone else's code. (Uploaded by Punk, from you guys are just fucked.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rather Be In The Sky

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of a two-hour improv imposed on me by wen, begun at 7:50 pm 6/22, completed at 9:53. Thanks go out to EPur, Kelly and especially the wenling for rapidfire AIM beta and tacklehugs. The asterisks were a gift from Punk, and this, as everything, is for YV.

Bluebird Air at the Danbury Airport in Danbury, CT had a blue Piper Colt that wouldn't go.

She'd flown here once, done two hours toward the eighteen she'd racked up in that Piper Colt, but it had been years ago, before something in the engine went kaput and Bill Murray, no relation, had stopped gassing it up and had left it tied to yellow-painted blocks on the tarmac.

_Mulder?_

_Yes?_

_I'm hungry._

_Hungry?_

_Yes, Mulder. Never mind._

She'd put down the phone, blood in her groin worrying to the sailor's chantey of the dialtone.

The Colt was the reason she'd driven up here. She'd said to Laura "I need to burn this, I need to release this tension" and Laura had said "just do it" like she always did but this hadn't been what she'd meant.

She'd come in a rented Saab. It was blue too. Drove up the New Jersey turnpike with bad airconditioning and a lopsided radio, crossed the George Washington bridge and taken the Saw Mill River Parkway to 684 to 84 to exit 7 in Danbury, where she pulled off and parked on the gravel.

Her legs were doughy from the drive and she wobbled from the slip of heels on small stones. Someone was hosing down a plane in the parking lot. Her insides thrummed like a powersaw rusted-stuck on, hewing forever, churning and rooting and chewing through saying feed me, fight me, rattle dem bones dem bones.

Bill-Murray-no-relation recognized her immediately, which was the reason she'd worn jeans. He threw his arms around her waist, his cheek salted, peppered, smelling of Marlboro Menthols and the soft prick of the tip of a toothpick as he kissed her.

"Dana!" He reminded her of Carvel soft-serve and motor oil. "How you been?"

But it was a perfunctory question and he didn't really care and she loved him for it. She didn't come up here to talk.

"The Colt's still out of commission, I'm guessing," she said.

He nodded, rolling the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. "Just fueled up the Cessna-182 though. Your Daddy ever put you in one of those?"

Dad had had a Piper Cherokee for the two years they'd lived in New London and he'd kept it here. Bill Murray knew better than to broach the rivalry between Piper owners and Cessna owners, and Scully knew he was teasing her but she sucked her teeth and with a straight face said "nope."

It had been years, anyway. Years since she'd last sat in the pilot's seat of the Colt or Cub or Cherokee Warrior (though she was so short she'd had a hell of a time seeing over the low-wings of that one) or whatever wasn't being used for courier runs with Bill Murray in the co-pilot's chair and the rudder pedals sinking under her feet and the shimmy of the stick in her hands.

It was already a new millennium. Everyone dead had been dead for a thousand years.

"I'll try the 182," she said. 

Ground check first. Nut, bolt, cotter pin. Ailerons up, ailerons down. Tail rudder, tail rudder wires.

"Like riding a bike," Bill Murray said.

Ducking under the wing to check for nicks and birdsnests in the propeller, Scully nodded.

 _I need you_ , she thought at no one in particular, because no one was there. Her bedroom was dark, heavy, silent, walls painted with ghosts and the mourning sob of a Chopin ballad. _I need you._

The yellow brick road dotted line of runway 29 scrolled out in front of her like wrapping paper.

Bill Murray handed her the radio. "Six-eight Mike requesting clearance for takeoff, over."

"Cleared for takeoff on runway two-nine, six-eight Mike."

"Six-eight Mike."

Mixture to half, full throttle and the stick throbbed in the palm of her hand. Up there was the sky, the sky huge and swollen and she raced to it, 40, 50, 60, 80, 88 miles an hour and she pulled up on the stick 90, 100.

"You're doing great," Bill Murray said but the wind and the roar of the prop sucked his words from his mouth through the hot rubber of the fat headset and Scully fought the urge to close her eyes.

Up up up up up up up and she pressed on the right rudder and pitched 40 degrees, pulling round to see the squat blue barn of Bluebird beneath her.

 _We never talk about this_ , she'd blushed, the night before.

 _About what?_ He'd been chivalrous, or maybe evasive.

 _About how much I want you_ , she didn't say. _About the space of your back when it's turned to me, the trembling trail of my fingers trying to find the aura of warmth but not too close to be noticed and I'm driving past the speed limit through my skin for you._

 _About us_ , she'd said. _About where this goes._

And he'd said _I love you, you know?_ but that hadn't been what she'd been looking for.

 _I know_ , she'd said.

There was nothing to do in the sky and Bill Murray wasn't much of a talker and that was a fine, good thing.

At twenty-nine hundred feet the ground was someone else's code. 

The sun was hot and clear and bright off the windshield, her world cut on the bias by two grey aluminum girders splinting the wings above the tiny plane. She pushed up her sleeves and slid her sunglasses back up the sweaty bridge of her nose.

Here faith and science converged, this defiance of nature spelled out allowing objects heavier than air to sail weightless through perfect space. Scully knew all about aerodynamics.

"A plane would rather be in the air than on the ground," her father had told her once, and she'd scrambled to find out why. She read maps with arrows and the teardrop cross-section of an airplane wing, and she'd seen the way heavy jets took off in their own pocket of air, carrying prisoners of spit and faith for the airplane's own whim. 

Even on the ground, in the wind, they tugged at their blocks, crying out like children to be born and airborne and given life; they chomped at the bit.

And then there were the pilots, the fliers, those masters of love and faith and science able to speak the language of their straining animals and ride that space-bubble of an unforgiving wave. Those were the strongest of the strong, not the ones who fought the currents but the ones who swore by it, sailors of space navigating by night taking only the word of honor of the stars.

To do it required an unashamed trust in the consistency of the universe. And to have that trust required experience, and understanding.

 _It's been seven years, Mulder_ , she'd whispered to herself, shaking her head. _Priests have succumbed to less._

 _You're the strongest of the strong_ , he said back in her fantasies. _Come here and let me touch you._

 _How can I know if I love you until I've felt you inside me?_ She'd ask as if it were justification, but he'd shut her up with a kiss. 

_I don't know_ , he'd murmur.

 _I don't know_ , she'd murmur back. 

It had been too hot, seasonal heat wave and her airconditioning was shot and she slept fitfully or didn't sleep for ten nights, running cold water over the insides of her wrists and looking for blood to be quenched and cooled with other blood.

After the tenth night of fantasy she'd remembered the sky.

They'd been up for forty minutes and all she'd seen was highway, highway and hills and the deciduous forests of spring in New England.

"You taking care of yourself down there in Washington?" Bill Murray asked through the headset.

Scully nodded.

"Your dad would be damned proud."

"I'm gonna take her down, okay?"

"You're a natural," Bill Murray said. "Haven't forgotten a thing. Just a couple more hours and we'll have you soloing."

"Nah," Scully said. "This is enough for me. I don't need to solo. Plus," she smiled at him, molars knocking against molars as the plane shuddered, "I like the companionship."

Bill Murray didn't know what to say.

Scully found the landing pattern, flaps up, mixture cut and the tower cleared six-eight Mike for landing on runway 80.

She was hot, rings of sweat under her arms in her t-shirt and a long drive back and she fought with the little plane as it stepped down earthward.

"Plane would rather be in the air than on the ground," she heard Ahab saying through the rattle of wind against the high-wing flaps. In her hands, the stick choked and coughed and cried out not to stop, to go up again.

Not to stop.

The ground whirled below, streaks of grey interrupting green, man and nature and life and god in a magazine cutout collage getting closer to the little wheels.

The plane argued, fought and sputtered and she thought about Mulder again.

_Just once?_

That was the phrase she'd practiced; she'd rolled it on her tongue like an offering because she knew that he'd know what it meant. She'd even gotten in her car though it was past midnight and she'd driven to his house and tested the words, practiced them, imagined knocking on his door with her hair still wet from the shower to say _Just once, Mulder?_

Washington crickets chirped.

Nature fought desire, will fought against will to live. Like that last glance in the mirror, raking a hand through your hair because you're embarrassed to be seen windswept, nature fought the very urge of humanity that it had created.

And someone's wiser conscience said no. And someone's stupider passion begged _please_ and it went unheard.

One more chance, one more square through the air in the landing pattern before setting her down for good and it was summertime, it was a treat. Scully winked at Bill Murray.

The ground was closing and it was a last-minute decision, but she closed the flaps, pulled hard on the throttle and cranked up the mixture again.

"Touch-and-go, eh?" Bill Murray winked back. "Nice job."

And they were aloft again; Bill Murray apologized to the tower and someone grounded down there laughed and said "no problem, tower out."

At eighteen hundred feet the sky was an embrace.

She would have to land again, just one more pass over route 84, over the forests of New Milford and the reservoir and the shopping mall and the traffic and the people in love.

She would have to land again, back on wobbly legs to the car, kicking a beer can and scaring away a squirrel who'd been hiding under a mesh baseball cap that read "Pilots Do It In The Sky" and driving home with the broken air conditioning and the lopsided radio getting only country stations on the passenger's side.

But not just yet, not now. The plane had asked a favor, and she'd complied, because she was the strongest of the strong, and she could.

Just once.


End file.
